An acute hospital is a type of hospital that provides short-term care for patients with severe injuries, urgent medical conditions, or during recovery from surgery. Acute care services are generally delivered by teams of healthcare professionals from a range of medical and surgical specialties. Acute care may require a stay in a hospital emergency department, ambulatory surgery center, urgent care center, or other short-term stay facility, along with the assistance of diagnostic services, surgery, or follow-up outpatient care in the community. Hospital-based acute inpatient care typically has the goal of discharging patients as soon as they are deemed healthy and stable. Acute care settings include emergency departments, intensive care, coronary care, cardiology, neonatal intensive care, and many general areas where the patient could become acutely unwell and require stabilization and transfer to another higher dependency unit for further treatment. In the United States, there are approximately 4,749 acute care hospitals.